Taking Possession
by kwritten
Summary: (blend of two prompts) Elena and/or Katherine: They've always been copies, and they'll never be an original, but some copies are better than the original. Elena/Caroline: We used to wish to be friends forever. Forever turned out to be a lot longer than we thought it would be.


**Title:** Taking Possession  
**Prompt:** (blend) Elena and/or Katherine: _They've always been copies, and they'll never be an original, but some copies are better than the original._ AND Elena/Caroline:_ We used to wish to be friends forever. Forever turned out to be a lot longer than we thought it would be. _  
**Characters/Pairings:** Elena/Caroline, Katherine  
**Word Count:** ~ 3196  
**Rating/Warnings:** PG-13 (implied sex and ~language)  
**Spoilers:** Future!fic - no spoilers past S3 finale  
**Summary:** That isn't Caroline sitting next to Elena...  
**Author's notes:** I knew that I wanted to work with E/K the minute I saw the prompts, and then Caroline just sort of jumped in! Which was a bit of a delight. Thanks so much to for being the best cheerleader ever! Also - bolded quotes are from Jean-Jacquez Rousseau. The quote Elena reads aloud is from Jacques Derrida's analysis of Rousseau. (If you want specifics re: which text, please comment or feel free to PM me!)

**A little intimate connection with this excellent girl, and a few reflections upon my situation, made me discover that, while thinking of nothing more than my pleasures, I had done a great deal towards my own happiness. In the place of extinguished ambition, a life of sentiment, which had entire possession of my heart, was necessary to me.**

It was just a classroom. Just like any classroom. In any University. It wasn't like they hadn't been there before.

Caroline leaned over the ridiculously small platform attached to her chair – some people called it a desk, she typically called it torture – and whispered, "Elena. Why are we taking this class again?"

"I like this class," was the hissed reply.

Caroline slumped back in her seat, grumbling, "Yeah… not like it's only the 30th time we've done this."

"You can go, if you want?" Elena looked up from her dog-eared, heavily-marked books splayed out over her "desk" and intruding onto Caroline's small space.

Caroline sighed, "No. I won't leave." She nodded over her shoulder at a lanky brunette in the corner, his brow furrowed confusedly at his own sloppy notes, a letterman's jacket slung over the back of his seat. "I'm close to getting Justin to invite us to his Frat's party this weekend."

Elena didn't even look up, "I don't know why you bother. You could just compel him to invite you."

Caroline stood up in a huff, "What's the fun in that?!" Elena stared after her friend blankly as she swayed over to the boy and began giggling at something he may or may not have even said. Considering the besotted look on the boy's face, Elena guessed it didn't really matter. She went back to her books, scribbling furiously.

The texts in front of her were more than dog-eared, scraps of paper now held together by sheer force of will, fraying and yellowing with use and age. One particularly ragged book, probably already aged when she had once been human, was held together by a rubber band, the binding had been broken in so many places, it was now practically a bundle of loose papers with Elena's cursive in various colors littering the margins. The notebook in front of her looked nearly as ancient, especially considering the high-powered personal computers that sat on her classmate's desks, a lifetime of writing on each page. For the past several decades, she had been writing and rewriting her own notes, right on top of each other. Taking notes on her own notes, commenting on past conclusions, scratching out and filling in over and over.

It was not the notebook of a student or a historian. It was the product of a woman trapped in her own puzzle, seeking the blissful surrender of understanding. The puzzle before her became more ragged, more complex with each passing year - and there were so many to fill. A never-ending deconstruction of her own self that only prompted more words, more and more and more supplements to a conclusion she sought but could not find. The notebook, full and ragged - fraying at the edges, words disappearing into each other, dark lines on a once-white page flowing in and around each other … in some places mere lines, the words so convoluted and overlapping, they no longer could be determined as words at all. Once they had been. Elena would frown down at the pages, trying to glean meaning from the mess of lines and color, and remember a time when her own meaning was clear. This notebook - this single notebook that she was never without - was more of a reflection than that which peered out at her in the mirror each morning.

The students around Elena began to buzz with that anticipation that comes from the entrance of a professor; the fragmentary conversations of weekend plans, break-ups, hook-ups, bad food, and unrelenting familial relations gave way to the more concrete repetition of "did you do the reading - no, didn't you?" that signaled to Elena merely that this classroom was no different than any other - more importantly, that Caroline should be on her way back from her prowl. Elena uncurled her legs from where she had slung them up onto Caroline's seat and leaned to one side as she tucked one booted-foot under her and turned to her friend, "Did you get the invite?"

There was a slight tease to her voice, Caroline had been there for lifetimes and Elena never once regretted her presence. Rather, she cherished it - especially after long stints apart.

_There were always periods when they were separated - sometimes for much longer than either was prepared for. Often shorter than they needed. Meeting up in dive bars where their small frames wouldn't look out of place (forever is a long time in the body of a teenager - all their power of compulsion could not keep their bodies from betraying them) almost as if by accident (it was never by accident). Meeting after taking some time to wrap up their own sorrow with someone else. _

_After all this time, Elena still attempted to build a life with Stefan. They'd set up house, she'd cook him meals, he'd be a proper husband and bring home the bacon. They'd be so happy. Until she got restless. Until his presence made her skin itch, made her wild with his expectations, made her run. Made her run from the dreams she had as a child. _

_After all this time, Caroline still found a certain amount of childlike satisfaction in Tyler. Tyler her hero, who prowled with her - who let her be wild. Who seemed incapable of ever being anything than himself. Who was everything still that her childhood had been – must have been. She couldn't remember being a child anymore, except when he was close by._

_Their childhood dreams, living them out - playing house with the one who should have been "right" who should have felt "good" - was often the most difficult to grapple with after all these years. Sometimes Elena would see pain cross over Caroline's face that was eerily like her own, when they inadvertently reminded each other of the lives they had once wanted to lead. It was always with each other that they were reminded of what they had once thought would make them so happy, it was always with them - with their Heroes, their Saviors, their "good ones" - that they felt the most obligated to continue to want a life that they now knew never made much sense. It was an obligation - more than anything - that caused them pain, that drove them back. An obligation to the girls they once had been - to the dreams and fantasies they had once fought so hard for. No longer could they even pretend to be obligated to _them_ - it was more an obligation to the past, and to each other. To the girls they once were to each other._

_After all this time Elena still snuck off for months, years, at a time to find Damon in dark alleys. To hunt with him and feel with him. To let herself be as angry or as happy or as frightened as she needed to be. When Elena felt as though it all might be too much - or that it just wasn't enough - when she needed a reminder of the extremes she held within, she sought out Damon. _

_And even sometimes, Caroline would find herself traveling with an ancient beast - her Klaus. She hid away with him when Elena would hide away. She lived a fairy tale life with him, full of high emotion – large arguments – large gestures of love and adoration – body-crumbling passion. He was her vacation from normal, he was her space of unending desire._

_They hid these parts of themselves from each other; their sense of commitment to a distant past, their desire for the forbidden, their mutual need to sink into something comfortably outside of themselves. They both understood the need to escape into the past. They both understood how much more comforting their time was together afterwards. Both needed time away to sink and revel in their own extremes - together they found balance. Apart they revelled in their own extremes, licking at the world with their desire, allowing moments to consume them whole._

_Sinking herself into Caroline – feeling her hot and moist beneath, above, all around her – seemed to ground Elena back to a Reality that was neither all-passion or all-reason, that just __**was**__._

**When I was quite alone there was a void in my heart, which wanted nothing more than another heart to fill it up. Fate had deprived me of this, or at least in part alienated me from that for which by nature I was formed. From that moment I was alone, for there never was for me the least thing intermediate between everything and nothing.**

"Hello Elena."

The girl sitting next to her isn't Caroline... she was still in the corner with Justin, a pained expression on her face.

"Hello Katherine."

"Ah! I see I'm going to have twins in this class," the professor was a slight man with too-large glasses and a bright smile beaming down at Elena and her new neighbor.

Katherine smiled back brightly, "We promise not to intentionally trick you. Don't we?"

Elena breathed easily into her corresponding smile, "Wouldn't dream of it."

Of course, it almost seemed ridiculous how much this didn't happen, after all. How much they had managed to avoid each other. Elena couldn't lie to herself - not anymore, not after all this time with only her own thoughts to distract her from the achingly slow movement of time, _she only bothered to lie to Stefan anymore as if to stay in practice, as if to prove to herself she still could now that there were no frail humans attached to her _- now that her family was gone, her life all but stripped from her, what did she have to lose now, with the truth? and the truth was, Katherine's presence there, in the chair beside her, made her feel at ease in ways she had not in decades.

"Elena Gilbert, would you mind starting us off by reading aloud the passage I've put on the board, please?"

Elena looked up at the words emblazoned in front of her and blushed, her voice cracking as she read:

**_"Through this sequence of supplements a necessity is announced: that of an infinite chain, ineluctably multiplying the supplementary mediations that produce the sense of the very thing they defer: the mirage of the thing itself, of immediate presence, of originary perception. Immediacy is derived."_**

Elena cleared her throat.

This was quite possibly the most surreal literature class she had ever attended. Even "The Evolution of the Vampire in Popular Culture" didn't have the same level of personal attachment (Caroline had loved it - her paper on _Twilight _was recommended to a conference, which had just tickled them both).

But it wasn't like she hadn't read this before, it wasn't like she hadn't read this passage aloud to a room full of strangers again and again (she could pick out now, which professors would teach the material - which classes would include the right readings - with very little effort... Caroline said, Damon said, Stefan said - they all reminded her that she had about five degrees in Literature) - it wasn't like she wasn't completely enamored with the subject of her own life.

The professor was walking through the classroom, lecturing in an animated manner. Elena didn't hear a word. Everything seemed a little too far out of her grasp at the moment. And then the professor was standing right next to her - talking to her. She blinked up at the small man and forced a smile on her face (that smile that used to come so easily, that fake "yes I'm fine" toothy grin that meant nothing whatsoever, that didn't help her in the end).

"Which one of you ladies was born first? Twins always seem to know and care intimately which one was born first!" the second thought was directed towards the rest of the class, as if there was no possible way Katherine or Elena would challenge this assertion. As if they hadn't spent their entire lives bickering like siblings over who was older, who was first.

Who was Original.

It could never occur to this professor, at a University crawling with humans, that there was _nothing_ original about either of the girls sitting in front of him. That they were echoes of something from so long ago - there was no longer a conscious memory of the illusive _her _they were mere reflections of, except in the minds of two men who were no longer men.

As they were reflections, copies of each other.

Or so she was told.

Or so they had all been told.

As they would continue to be told.

Katherine looked up at the man darkly, "I was born first."

The professor rubbed his hands together, "And do you - Elena - ever feel like a copy of Katherine? Since she left the birth canal a few moments before?"

Elena felt numb. _What the fuck was this day?_ Beside her she heard Katherine snort - or cough - she wasn't sure. She wasn't sure she cared. "I ... I ..." she stammered out.

Elena looked down at her notebook - that wealth of stammerings of thought that always sat before her like a roadmap to how she was _supposed _to feel. Lifetimes of analysis on the meaning of her own existence and body. Pages of scribblings that kept proving a meaning she could not bear. The weight of being a copy. The weight of being a supplement to something else. There it was, over and over on the page:

There is No Original

There Are Only Copies

Supplements, the Mind Seeking the Fulfillment of Something that does Not Exist.

At the very edge of her senses she heard Caroline whisper softly, "Guys? Can we get the FUCK out of here? This is beyond spooky."

Elena twirled a pink pen between her long fingers. Contemplating. Her mouth going dry.

Elena turned to Katherine and looked her straight in the eye, "No. No I don't feel like a copy of Katherine. That would be silly." _Do you feel like a copy of __**her**__? _

She didn't ask it, but in Katherine's eyes she saw recognition. She saw her answer. She saw her doppelganger's eyes soften, as if she had been waiting for this moment - as if she had known all along this moment would happen. As if she had arrived that day, in this moment, to finally hear Elena say the thing she had known for so long.

_Fuck them_.

Katherine got to her feet, "I think it's time we left, don't you?"

Behind her, Caroline leaped up, "Oh I know I do!" She scurried over to them and started shoving Elena's stacks of papers into her old worn-out bag (now an antique, like they were).

Katherine was still staring right at Elena, they hadn't broken their gaze. It wasn't necessary to. It was only them two in the room.

And suddenly Elena knew exactly how she wanted to end this conversation. It suddenly became so clear to her how to pick up the pieces of what they had been left and claim them for their own. To take back possession of their own selves. She stood up and deliberately maneuvered herself to Katherine's side, taking the older girl's hand in her own. (Older was so relative now, wasn't it?) "We're not even sisters," she said with a laugh in her throat, pulling Katherine to her.

Her lips were smooth - softer than Elena had thought was possible, and cold, cold the way vampire lips often were. Katherine nipped at her as she drew away, her eyes smoky, her body leaning into Elena's.

It had been such a chaste kiss, really. Just a simple pressure of lips. But they were both flushed, their bodies aching in to each other, skin to skin.

They lost themselves in the act of taking possession of that which had been ripped from them so long ago. Had it been so long, since they were young? Since they were allowed to express what they wanted? And was it ironic at all - for either of them - that all they had been seeking for all this time, was to take hold of their own lives once again? To be in possession of the very thing they were - but were unable to enjoy. The body that bore so much meaning, to hold it and love it again. Love it the way they had when they were young and their body was all theirs - no one else's to control or want. No one else's to determine meaning for. Love it the way they had when it had been such a convenient vessel, quick when they needed to be quick, slow when they needed to be slow.

What child possibly contemplates the action of setting one foot in front of the other - that connection between body and mind that so many take for granted was lost to them so long ago, it seemed inconceivable. So long had they lived under the weight of their own bodies, of what they meant, of what they could be used for.

Under her fingertips, Katherine's skin was as soft as her own. Under Katherine's ministrations, Elena's own skin relinquished itself. They were made for each other. They were the same. They were different. They were mirrors. They were opposites. They shared skin, they matched scar for scar.

They were bodies again - responding to bodies in the dark. There was nothing upon their skin but the heat as they responded to each other. As if for the very first time.

Caroline's voice carried through the fog, impatient and a little husky, "Girls? Can we PLEASE go home now?"

**I found in her the supplement of which I stood in need; by means of her I lived as happily as I possibly could do, according to the course of events.**

In the morning, trapped between two sets of long, lean legs, the first thought that Caroline had (it was a wicked thought, but hell if she cared – she was wicked, after all) was how the Salvatores would react if they ever found out that she had been the first to have them both.

_And it was so simple, so destructively simple, to travel with three rather than two. Katherine would leave suddenly – so suddenly – and disappear for long stretches of time. But they were always there when she came back. And she hurt them – she hurt everyone. And they hurt her back, the only way they knew how – by not really caring one way or another. _

_And there were moments when Elena felt as though she was seeing herself live a life in a mirror… and it didn't much matter anymore._


End file.
